Monthly Archives: October 2008

I have been all over the place recently on my knitting. I’m usually a one or two project at a time person, but right now I have like six things going! For myself, I have the Road to Golden sweater, the Ruffled Shrug, and the Firestarter socks. I started a scarf for a coworker and need to start my Special Olympics scarf. I have been working pretty frantically on Halloween costumes for myself and for Paquito. I think mine is done (required no knitting) and am almost done with Paquito’s. I hope he turns out cute. I don’t want to give away any secrets. After my Halloween party on Saturday I’ll share pictures with everyone.

I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve finished a project. I completed the Protopretty DNA Tank about a month ago. The pattern can be found here.

I used the Bouton D’Or yarn that you brought me back from Paris. It wasn’t until planning on starting it that I realized I had much less yarn than the pattern required. I decided to go ahead anyway, and I ended up modifying the top quite a bit to make it work. My gauge was looser than the pattern, so I made the small size to compensate. I converted the pattern into the round. This didn’t cause any problems on the cable panel, but was a little weird on the lace panels. The lace panel is charted and written out. The two did not match. I ended up following the chart. If I had been knitting back and forth though I would have been pretty confused by the chart. A lot of reversing double decreases and stuff. But mine seems to look the same as the other people that worked it flat.

When I got to the armholes, I bound off for a racerback top. I just kind of fudged it. Decreasing down into the skinny section and then increasing before splitting the two sections off for straps. I angled the straps so they would meet the straps in the front. I made the top more scoopnecked than in the original pattern. I just bound off for the neck earlier and decreased my straps down more. I was pretty much fudging it, so it’s not precisely even on each side. I tried to keep the torchon lace pattern centered within the straps. Then I grafted the tops of the straps together.

I picked up along the armholes and the neck and knit for a couple rows then bound off. I used almost all of the yarn. Just a tiny ball left, maybe 10 yards.

The top probably could have benefitted from a few seams. The bamboo grows like crazy. I suspected it would, but it’s starting to look a little sloppy around the armholes. I am happy with how the project turned out, but for whatever reason it is very unflattering. I think it has to do with the horizontal nature of the DNA cable. As soon as I put it on I notice fat rolls and it looks like I have muffin top in all these pictures. Which doesn’t mean I’ll stop wearing it, but I am definitely a little self-conscious in it.

In other news I went to Hawaii last week with my family. It was my Mom’s birthday so we all met up and spent about 9 days on Hawai’i and Oahu. The Big Island was really great and we went to the volcano and saw the lava flow into the ocean (from a long way away =( ). It was a lot of fun. I won’t bore you with specifics, but here’s a few pictures of the trip: